The first was PSM3 with the PS4 rumours, and this weekend CVG have pushed the penultimate issue of Xbox World as the leading source of all things Xbox 720.
Whilst the PS4 rumours mainly concentrated on the negatives – no used games, no backwards compatibility – there doesn’t seem to be the same angle with the Xbox-centric piece.
Of course, it’s not actually readable without buying the mag – but that hasn’t stopped the promotion for what should hopefully be more than a compilation of existing rumours.
Indeed, CVG say Xbox World has “good form” with regards to next-gen leaks, and cites “confirmation” of previous articles that said the new Xbox would have augmented reality and directional sound as both appeared in the June leak, which Microsoft tried to close up and remove from the web.
“Xbox World has been at the cutting edge of Durango coverage for over 12 months. Unless something really dramatic changes, everything we reveal in our penultimate issue will be revealed long before E3 in June,” says the magazine’s Editor In Chief, Dan Dawkins, suggesting that like Sony, Microsoft will show off the new console before Los Angeles next year.
Despite the magazine running with “Xbox 720” in big letters on the cover, the magazine says the next Xbox will simply be called “Xbox”. It’ll feature Kinect 2.0, use Blu-ray discs and – yes – directional sound and augmented reality via glasses. It’ll also have TV input and an “innovative” controller.
According to the mag’s final ‘exposé’, the next-gen Xbox – which it speculates is likely to be called simply “Xbox” – will introduce Kinect 2.0, use Blu-ray discs and feature directional audio, a TV output AND input, ‘innovative controller’ and – at a later stage of the console’s life – AR glasses.
CVG also point to the 8GB of RAM reports, which Xbox World has also run with in the feature, which apparently spans 8 pages. The new Xbox CPU will have a CPU with “four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores.”
It’s tricky to figure out how much of this is actually going to be new and how much is recycled from internet rumours and gossip, but if those 8 pages are all new, solid information then that’s one hell of an issue. I’m personally wondering why SmartGlass, which will surely play a very strong role next gen, isn’t mentioned in the teaser. Unless, of course, that’s the “innovative” controller…
gideon1451
I wonder how much they take into consideration what the future of how games are programmed when they design consoles.
skibadee
until they both do a specs sheet this is kind of pointless.
Uhyve
Was about to call BS, but apparently AMD can actually have 4 logical cores per hardware core. Caught me by surprise. Seems wasteful though, with the amount of chip real estate being used by the hardware to allow 12 virtual cores, I’d expect them to be able to fit a whole extra hardware core.
Then again, MS will be able to claim that the console has 16 logical cores, an impressive sounding stat for adverts.
SilverCider
Intel’s high end Xeon (server) cores can do 4 logical/hardware too. Although I only found that out myself a few weeks ago! I can see your point about the use of space, but for the most part where heavy parallelism exists it might be more energy efficient having fewer cores but with the ability to do more on each – power efficiency is quite important in the server market hence its appearance.
Uhyve
Quite true, wasn’t thinking about power consumption, makes sense with the small form factor of consoles, MS probably learnt their lesson with that.
yogh_wayne
Focus on the negative rumours for one competitor and on the positive ones for the other. Sounds fair. Sure, it’s just rumours (i.e. pointless), but as you can see in some of the comments here, it’s already starting to shape people’s opinions about the next-gen consoles.
TheDemocrodile
Itll have 4GB DDR3 RAM, Kinect 2 will be sold separately, it wont come with the console as MS has made a ton of money out of it and it makes no financial sense to bundle a moneymaker in for free.
Core architecture will be a standard quad core set-up with a dedicated dual core GPU, this means the extra cores will be able to more effectively deal with the demands of integrating the console into the media streaming environment that exists today whilst utilising the power of a dedicated dual core GPU for gaming as (unfortunately) quad core gaming has yet to take off.
Incidentally i`m fairly impressed that most people are more positive towards the new xbox given its predecessors’ awful reliability issues (original models obviously).
For me personally it makes no sense ordering a console for day one when reliability has been suspect in the past.
I like the naming though, the whole 1-2-3 thing would get ridiculous after awhile, they would seem to be following Apples example if true.
bunimomike
The Democrodile has spoken!!!! Heed his call.
Nismo400R84
I can’t actually believe some of you are making buying decision based on rumours and speculation.
Now all we need now is the Muppets that turn up and numpty statements like “no sale unless its £200 or less”
Sympozium
lol. funny.